I agree with you about the COBOL thing, though a big question is what will happen when AI progresses a little more.

> You won't see Rust is embedded

What do you mean by embedded? OpenWRT? It's there because of the python-cryptography dependency. In the kernel, it's optional for now, but as soon as someone starts upstreaming some faster versions of things, it's going to become defacto mandatory.

If you're talking about like 8 bit microcontrollers, sure, but that type of thing doesn't really have much of a future either. Nobody wants to run some special circuit with a vendor SDK based on a patched gcc when they can just use a slightly more complex RISCV circuit and standard tooling.

> almost always inherently memory unsafe

Same argument could be made about the Linux kernel, but it's not, because when everything is dangerous you care even more about tools to help prove correctness.

What's important is that ABI-wise, Rust is basically C. You don't have a VM or a GC or anything sneaking around behind your back and touching things you can't touch, so low level is actually possible.